


Non-Required Reading

by likeadeuce



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Comic Book References, Gen, Shenanigans, adam and blue backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26335129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: Blue and Adam have very similar points of reference when it comes to comics. In fact, it develops that they have the exact same points of reference: namely, everything that was available in trade paperback in the teen room of the Henrietta Public Library during the years they were in sixth through eighth grade.“I spent so much time in there,” Blue says.  “Weird we never ran into each other.”*And three other encounters between the Raven kids and fictional superheroes.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Non-Required Reading

I. 

Gansey says he doesn’t keep any secrets from his friends, but they still mostly learn about his life history when he drops comments like, “The last time I went base jumping in Borneo. . .” at which point Adam has to call him ‘Master Bruce’ in the Michael-Caine-as-Alfred voice. This makes Ronan laugh-snort through his nose so of course Adam has to keep calling Gansey that again and again for the rest of the day.

Gansey wearily informs them that he is, as they know, a Marvel guy and also the Nolan Batman movies are overrated. This just makes Adam (who is an extremely good mimic) need to do the voice more and the others have to join in. Ronan does a decent “Christian Bale as Batman” and also “Christian Bale yelling at the guy who got in his light from that viral video,” but Blue steals the show with her Tom Hardy-as-Bane. (Although, technically, the one who does all of these voices better than anyone is Chainsaw).

II.

Gansey says he’s a Marvel guy but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have opinions. Adam finds this out when he makes a crack about how Dick isn’t such a bad name; Gansey shares it with Dick Grayson who is indisputably the best Robin.

This results in a pained Gansey face -- the ‘I’m not thrilled about correcting you but I’m going to be correcting you’ face -- and the statement that Tim Drake, self-taught boy detective, is just objectively the best Robin.

Ronan knows exactly enough about this topic, ie, one of those straight to DVD animated movies that Gansey threw on when they were drinking and bored, to declare Jason Todd the best Robin, especially when he came back from the dead and started calling himself Red Hood and kicking the shit out of people. This is Ronan’s only contribution to the conversation except to make occasional jokes about tiny shorts.

“Thoughts, Jane?” Gansey asks and Blue, reliably, raises a fist and says, “Justice for Stephanie Brown!” 

III.

Gansey says he’s a Marvel guy, he loves the Stan Lee “Excelsior” schtick, but he mostly means that he has the 102 issues of the original Lee/Kirby ‘Fantastic Four’ run memorized -- it’s classic, like the Camaro -- and he got the $100 /volume omnibus editions when he was 10, along with the Steve Ditko era of Spider-Man. 

He also sometimes wears a Silver Age “Iron Man” T-shirt that he bought when he decided to train for a triathlon, in the few months between Wales and Aglionby. (Gansey never actually made it to the point of entering a triathlon, though he had a very respectable time in the Charlottesville Half-Marathon last spring and he’s definitely, perpetually, going to go home for the Marine Corps Marathon next year). But he got the shirt because he liked the classic red and gold Don Heck art, and because he thought it would be a good ‘Iron Man triathlon’ joke if anybody asked about the shirt, which they never did.

He’s not actually an Iron Man fan, though, he doesn’t really have time for any hero who takes two-thirds of the movie to realize he should maybe stop being a complete asshole to everybody, and then is somehow supposed to get points for being slightly less of an asshole in the six minutes after it occurs to him? Also Tony Stark is entirely too familiar as a type who gets loud at, and then gets thrown out on his ear from, the kind of parties hosted at the Gansey household. No thank you.

Adam and Blue can talk to each other through references to seventies and eighties X-Men and Excalibur comics like it’s some kind of secret code. Gansey will occasionally ask, “Wait, which one is that? Whose codename does that go with?” and Adam says he ought to just read the books himself. No thank you, Gansey says. Too many retcons, he says. If he wants to piece together narratives full of inconsistencies that lose story threads and run all over the place, he has pre-Galfridian texts, and those have the excuse of being medieval and mostly in Welsh. “Just tell me the good parts of the stories,” Gansey says, “So I can understand what you’re talking about,” and sometimes they do.

IV. 

Blue and Adam have very similar points of reference when it comes to comics. In fact, it develops that they have the exact same points of reference: namely, everything that was available in trade paperback in the teen room of the Henrietta Public Library during the years they were in sixth through eighth grade.

“I spent so much time in there,” Blue says. “Trying to get a little peace and quiet away from my house.“

“Relatable,” says Adam. Although, he’s well aware by now, for different reasons.

“Weird we never ran into each other.”

Adam stops, raises his eyes, takes a good look at her, trying to mentally subtract a few years and some teenage attitude, to reimagine her creative haircut. “Oh,” he says, “Yeah actually that makes sense. I probably did see you there.”

“Oh. Sorry, I don’t remember --”

“It’s fine,” says Adam hastily. Adam’s home was technically in Augusta County, across the Henrietta Town Line, which was why he and Blue had never been at the same school when they were younger. It was close enough for Adam to bike to town, though, and he figured out the Henrietta Library had a considerably better collection than the one near his school where his mother had exasperatedly signed him up for a card.

Adam figured out that he was eligible to apply for a library card in Henrietta, but that he would need a parent to come down to the branch and sign him up for it. Even assuming that he could find his mother or father in a hospitable mood, it would completely defeat the purpose of having a quiet place to read where they couldn’t track him down. (If he just said ‘the library’ he wasn’t responsible for what they assumed. . .) So Adam would take stacks of books from the shelf and slump down in a chair or camp out in a corner and take all the time he could get away with. 

“If you didn’t see me,” he tells Blue, “It’s because I didn’t want anybody to see me. I was definitely hiding.” He would doubly have been hiding if he saw a pretty girl hanging out around the comic books. Way too stressful.

Blue pouts a little. “You should have come and said, ‘Hi.’ We could have been friends five years earlier.” 

Adam makes a face of regret. “I should have,” he says, “Sorry.”

The truth is, as neither of them says but both of them suspect, if a boy had come up and tried to talk to twelve-year old Blue Sargent when she was trying to read, she absolutely would have yelled at him. 

Sometimes, things need to happen on their own time.


End file.
